


Left Behind

by madeof_it



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Heavy Angst, POV First Person, Protective Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeof_it/pseuds/madeof_it
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur talks about life now with one less son. Much angst, many sadness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

Fred is dead, and I am alone.

People always talk about how horrible it must be for George, how he must feel like half of him is missing and he will never be whole again. Nobody has ever asked me.

The only time I was able to cry was immediately after it happened, after his body was moved and was laid across the stone floors of Hogwarts. The cold was quickly absorbed into his skin, and holding his hand I felt the life warmth drifting out of his fingertips. I cried then, for the loss of one of my sons, one of the two with the winning smile and clever pranks. I cried until I remembered that I was surrounded by my family, surrounded by seven others that needed me to be their stronghold as they grieved.

Nobody ever knew that the difference between Fred and George could be caught in the arrangement of the freckles smattering their noses. While George's look more like an angry swarm of bees, Fred's looked more like a galaxy speckled across his face. I felt I could see the entire universe in his gaze.

Parents aren't supposed to have favorite children, so of course I didn't have one of those. But Fred was near and dear to my own heart, and when he was three years old he crept right into the cavity in my chest and made himself at home. 

One night, after a stressful day at work, I had come home and directly secluded myself in my rickety toolshed, my anger unwinding itself as I hunched over a scratched countertop with Muggle tools clenched in my fist. Fred had been the only child to care for these amazing things that I wondered over, and that night he toddled into my shed and stared at all the shiny objects scattered around. I could see the awe written across his face, and I can still remember the feel of his tiny hands squeezed within mine as, together, we took apart an alarm clock and dissected its insides.

That shed was our secret for the next few years. While his brothers were out, punting lawn gnomes or zooming through the air on their brooms, Fred was often content to sit beside me without words, just the scrape of metal filling our afternoons as we tried to figure out just how everything worked.

Even now, I find myself trying to put things back together, although it's even quieter and even more frustrating.

I can hear the whispered murmurs that surround George when others walk past, seeing his blank stare and pale face, his dark freckles still angry and stark on his skin. They talk about how he can't form a Patronus anymore, how he doesn't laugh, doesn't speak, barely moves. I have to remind him to eat. I have to lead him out of his bedroom every night and urge him into the shower, hovering outside the thin curtain to make sure he doesn't drown or burn in the scalding water. Before I leave for work, I set him in his favored chair by the window where the sun will shine on his wan skin until I return in the evening. When I turn out all the lights in the Burrow, I take his hand and lead him up the narrow stairs where I tuck him into bed, the sheets pulled across his chest and a kiss planted on his forehead. Sometimes I have to tip back his head and urge him to swallow the Dreamless Sleep. I can't keep away his nightmares, but I try my best.

Molly is bad, too. Her grief is not quiet, though, nor is it calm. It is frantic and harried, and manifests itself in the dozens of dishes she brings to the staff of St. Mungos during the week, at her demand to assist Minerva at Hogwarts, at the dozen owls she sends out each day. She fusses and frets over her remaining children and cannot sit still. She tells me that when she isn't moving, she can hear his laughter, and so she fills her days with the clanging of pans and the scrape of brooms and brushes across whatever surfaces she can reach. Our home has never been this clean. Our home has never been this lonely.

Nobody asks how I feel, though. Since the moment we knew he wasn't coming back, that there was no way to save him, I haven't allowed myself to cry. I can feel it building up inside of me, this aching void that fills with black whenever I think of the things he could've been, the places he could've gone, the people he would've changed.

He was always changing people's lives.

I can't cry. If I let myself, I may never stop.

I have to be here to lead the other to the sunny spots, to take my wife's hand as it trembles in quiet moments. I can hear him, too, hear his laughter bubbling through my brain -- although lately it has gotten softer.

Sometimes, when the rest of the house is quiet and the world is sleeping, I slip out of my room and into my shed. It's cleaner now, since I can't stand seeing the broken gears and springs cluttering my worktop. They hurt me too much, and are a constant reminder of the hands that aren't handling them, whistling alongside me. They remind me of the pieces of myself and of my family that are ultimately irreparable.

The countertop now holds a stone basin.

It's a dull pensieve, small enough that nobody noticed me bring it in here, and enough like a bowl that the occasional rare visitor thinks nothing of it. I pull the silvery threads from my greying temples and lay them bare in the bowl, before softly pressing my face to them and being spirited away to times when colors were brighter and noises were sharper but didn't create a throbbing in my head.

It's in these moments that I can remind myself of how he laughed, and the lift of his chin when he smiled, and the way his eyes drooped minutely when he lied. I can remind myself of the lilt of his voice, and the bounce of his even footsteps, and the shock of hair that always fell into his sparkling brown eyes when he was trying to keep something from us. He thought he was such a good liar, but we always knew. We always knew.

In these moments, I can see him alongside his brother, and see how their skin glowed with their vitality and energy, almost like you could the magic their bodies contained. I miss hearing them finish each others' sentences. I miss hearing them speak at all. George rarely does anymore, as if hearing his own voice reminds him of the one lost. None of us resent him for it, but I think he resents himself. Sometimes I cannot meet his gaze when he looks at me, partly because I can't bear to see the emptiness that lingers within, and partly because of the fact that he is not the other. In those moments, I hate myself, never wishing that I could exchange one for another. I could never have chosen between them if I'd been forced to.

And when the first light of morning comes, I pull myself from the silvery fog and hope that the few glamours I use can hide the trail of tears and the shadows beneath my eyes. It's not fair that I can feel myself getting older while Fred is frozen in time, suddenly ageless, and lost to us forever.

They always talk about how George can't conjure a Patronus anymore, but nobody has every asked me about mine.

I would go up against a million Death Eaters alone, I would crumble stone buildings, I would cast unforgivables if it would bring him back.


End file.
